Pool lighting has become more and more popular in the recent past. Pool lighting has been around for many years. Initially pool lighting was used strictly for safety purposes. Night time swimming, although not terribly popular, was done with much greater safety at night with lighted pools for obvious reasons.
After adding lighting, pool owners and others noticed that calming effort of night time lighting. Visitors and pool owners alike noticed the tranquil effect sitting by the pool at night had.
Later, enhancements to lighting were developed. For example, color lighting was added as a feature to pools. Such lighting provided viewers with greater interest and had the same or greater benefits to peaceful and tranquil viewing. Additional enhancements such as sequential color lighting were further added.
As would be expected, one must provide conduit for powering the lighting. Typically, the place chose to add such conduit has been the return fitting. However, adding conduit to the return fitting presents additional challenges. For example, the free flow of water into the pool is impeded when channel for the conduit is placed is the existing channel for water.
In some installations, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,499, the light and the light fixture are placed in the water channel for the return fitting. Other examples of such light fixture installations are set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 7,188,378. The '378 patent represents an advancement of the art. The '378 patent includes an electrical access conduit in the water channel. However, as depicted in the '378 patent the channel is immediately adjacent the side wall of the water channel. Therefore the electrical channel or electrical access conduit does not provide a barrier as great as the earlier described '499 patent. Nevertheless, what is referred to as the electrical access conduit by the '378 patent is still in the water channel and is still blocking the free flow of water through the return fitting.
What is needed is a lighting installation does not block the free flow of water through the water return fitting of the pool. What is also needed is a pool lighting fixture, which provides a structure for virtually ensuring that leakage will not result from such an electrical conduit line.